YAACT: A genetic algorithm tool for code coverage analysis

Testing is both technically and economically an important part of high quality software production. It has been estimated that testing accounts for half of the expenses in software production. Much of the testing is done manually or using other labor-intensive methods. It is thus vital for the software industry to develop efficient, cost effective, and automatic means and tools for software testing. Researchers have proposed several methods over years to generate automatically solution which have different drawbacks. This study examines automatic software testing optimization by using genetic algorithm approaches. This study will cover two approaches: a) obtain the sequence of regression tests that cover the greatest amount of code and b) once it is achieved another genetic algorithm will eliminate tests cases that cover the same section of code on the basis of still get the maximum code coverage. The overall aim of this research is to reduce the number of test cases that need to be run with the greatest amount of code covered.